After the Cybermen
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Set after The Age of Steel, the Doctor finally accepts his Time Lord responsibility when Mickey decides to leave and he has to close the parallel universe off...if only Rose will stop trying to be a four year old. Clearly not Rose friendly but not excessive bashing.


**After the Cybermen.**

The Time Vortex's usual blue and purple hue gently overlapped pulsing with exotic energies and dark matter never failed to make the Doctor awed, proud and scared of the majesty of Time Lord power and scientific achievement at the sight of the pinnacle of Omega and Rassilon's work, but there was a vicious looking black stain on the radial wall. A tear that reminded the Doctor of a rip in a piece of fabric and he wondered how he'd missed it before remembering with guilt the way he'd pranked Mickey. If only he'd paid attention….. The Doctor sighed and shrugged his shoulders, there was no point worrying about it now. Mickey had just left with Rose's phone with the code which canceled out the emotional inhibitors of the Cybermen. The Doctor had to admit that Mickey was right, his presence did balance out that world since his parallel self's death. He shook his head, hoping to push the memories of the Cybermen aside to focus on what needed doing here. He looked around the console room, almost expecting Rose to be there, but she wasn't. He frowned curiously, wondering when she'd left before deciding it didn't matter. He didn't need the girl pestering him at a time like this.

For a moment he took a moment to study the readouts to check the TARDIS had the energy needed for what he was planning and grunting with satisfaction when he saw that the TARDIS was rapidly reenergising itself after enduring the sudden shock of losing so much of her energy but being back in her normal universe and her normal habitat of the vortex was doing her the world of good. The console room had been dimmer than usual as he and Rose had wasted so much time in that parallel world and the energy from the power cell he'd found in the room after their arrival in that world had leaked, but she had recovered when they'd returned to the safety of the vortex, wrangling about Mickey's decision. The Doctor had been rocked by Mickey saying he wanted to stay, but after hearing it was to remain with his grandmother who was gone in his home universe, Mickey had the right. But Rose would not have it. He cringed as he remembered how whiny Rose had become. What was she, 5? Couldn't Mickey make his own decisions without needing to hold Rose's hand? The console beeped and he regained his attention, and the Doctor smiled at the ceiling. His oldest friend was getting impatient.

Right, he thought to himself when he realised he was getting distracted, time to get to work.

The Doctor had had it all worked out in his mind. He was going to scan the crack in time which had torn them from their usual space time and dropped them - literally - into a parallel world, and use the readings to find other cracks in the vortex and close them up. It wasn't a difficult process in itself, well within the boundaries of what a TARDIS even one as old as his could do. The problem was there were many frequencies and what he did now might not affect all of the other cracks out there. There were bound to be others, and the Doctor didn't want to be caught out again.

He had thought he'd lost the TARDIS in that other universe, the one constant thing in his lifespans since he'd fled Gallifrey all those years before everything turned into a nightmare. All because he'd been too interested in pranking a young man who truly wanted to fit in rather than pay attention, but then he hadn't expected a crack in time. But he needed to be serious in future, something that didn't really go well with his new persona. But if it meant his TARDIS lived a lot longer then so be it. Yeah, he could carry around a spare energy cell topped up by his own artron energy or energy gleaned from another temporal rift but if he made it a habit to fall into other universes then there would be very little to fix, and with Gallifrey gone there was only so much he could do to repair the damage and there were limits to what the TARDIS could take even if technically she was indestructible, but if he did make a habit of falling into other realities then he might as well stop repairing the damage she'd sustain. Just the thought of losing her made the Doctor physically ill - the TARDIS was many things to him, she was his best and most oldest friend topped by the Brigadier and Jamie, and Sarah Jane, she was his home, his refuge, but most of all she was the only TARDIS to have truly given him the chance to prove to other Time Lords he could be a Time Lord. How could he suddenly let her die because of his stupidity, his carelessness? No Time Lord allowed the death of their TARDIS, it was like a devoted husband or wife failing to protect their spouses or children. Swallowing hard to stop the bile rise from his stomach, the Doctor pushed those thoughts aside and commenced the scan. While that went on he started to work on the dimensional stabilisers. The dimensional stabilsers were one of the Time Lords greatest and best known inventions. They controlled the interior size and scale of a TARDIS, for a moment the Doctor allowed himself a small smirk as he remembered how he'd stolen the dimensional control off the Monks TARDIS which had reduced it to the size of a dolls house which had stranded him in 1066 before frowning as the memory of the War Chief reducing the dimensions of that SIDRAT during that disaster with the war games, and wondered if that was karma for what he'd done to the Monk. The dimensional stabilisers allowed the TARDISes to cross the barriers of time and space, but they also had the capacity to seal and plug space time anomalies and rifts, and cracks in time. The Doctor moved slowly as prepared the stabilisers - usually he would rush around like a kid with a high sugar content but he couldn't take any chances with this one - while he waited for the scan to be finished. It took time like he knew it would, the TARDIS was still recovering from the shock and the relief, but she would heal in time but he used the interminable patience of his people to wait. He had plenty of time and they weren't going anywhere. When the scan was finally finished he studied the screen carefully, not even bothering to put on his brainy specs since he wasn't in the mood to look clever at the moment before keying in the frequency into the dimensional stabilisers.

Once he was finished the Doctor hesitated. As soon as he switched on the stabilisers, Mickey would be trapped in that parallel world forever, but the Doctor had to do this, his duty and role as a Time Lord meant he couldn't just walk away and ignore this crack like nothing happened. He had to see the bigger picture. What if another time traveller stumbled across the crack and they couldn't get out? It would be the height of arrogance to suggest he was the only one with access to the vortex - the Time Agency might use tacky vortex manipulators, but a crack like this would be large enough to snag one and pull the operative through, and they might not make it out; he might disapprove of the agency and what it stood for, but that didn't mean he should condemn them to such a fate. All because he had selfishly decided to keep it open simply to go back and forth, and even if he did leave the crack open there was no guarantee it would stay open in the first place. He had three choices - he could leave the crack open and potentially run the risk of falling through the crack again, and he would end up in the same universe or in another. It would not just endanger himself and whoever was with him, but it would potentially cripple the TARDIS and without Gallifrey's resources and with himself the only one of his people left behind after the war to pick up the pieces and to clean up the mess it was too high a risk. He could still leave the crack and leave a hazard to navigation in his wake, and it would close on its own providing it was that type of anomaly, or his third choice - he could close the crack and put his mind at ease.

He just….regretted the necessity of sealing the crack without properly knowing Mickey that well. The last few hours in that parallel world had been an eyeopener for him, and he blamed his previous self for being too quick to judge Mickey without really getting to know him, but when he'd first met him Mickey had not been too keen on him. Being called a "thing" was quite off putting, but Mickey had garnered some respect from him during their next meetings, especially during that mess with the Slitheen and later on when Mickey had helped Jackie nurse him after his recent and probably most traumatic regeneration. The Doctor sighed, fingers still poised over the controls as the TARDIS patiently waited for him to act. Memories of seeing Mickey stand up to Jake, rescuing them from Cyber-control in that airship after figuring out the code to the emotional inhibitors showed Mickey wasn't a cowardly idiot - yeah, he got scared but who didn't?

"Goodbye Mickey," the Doctor finally said after a mental moment which had seemed to stretch for hours though he knew it hadn't, and finally pressed the control. With the scanner he saw the TARDIS create a field that stretched like an elastic bubble around the crack, and the crack started to close. Once it was halfway closed the Doctor pressed a few more controls to begin repairing any other time cracks in the vortex - he knew it wasn't going to repair all the cracks, but at least he would repair some of the damage. He thought for a moment then he keyed in a few more frequencies into the stabilisers, not many but a few more. If he programmed the whole scope then the TARDIS might lose a lot more energy, but at least this way there was a bit of closure. Shifting the screen around so he could see the display clearly, the Doctor sat down in the pilots chair and closed his eyes - one of the many issues Time Lords had was not needing much in the way of sleep but even they had limits - and he needed to rest. After running into the Cybermen again he felt he needed it.

The Doctor grimaced as he thought of the Cybermen. He hadn't seen or heard from them since the Time War and if he was honest with himself he wished they'd died out rather than lived, but he had heard rumors and stories since the war's end of their survival but he hadn't seen them since. He guessed they were lying low and rebuilding from the losses they'd received from their interminable wars they used as an excuse to wiping out individual societies and replacing them with new additions to the Cyber - race, but meeting a parallel version which had started from scratch on another Earth had terrible implications. Had Lumic found remnants from Mondas, if the planet had existed of course, and decided to simply base his Cybermen on the Mondasian pattern? It wouldn't be the first time someone had decided to simply copy the Cybermen's technology and use their own philosophy to sugarcoat their efforts though it made no difference in the end. There were dozens of races who copied other powerful races to make them better, and the Cybermen weren't an exception. There were too many out there - groups and individuals - who took the technology which had amazing and brilliant applications before they took it too far. That was the mistake the people of Mondas had made centuries ago before their planet was destroyed, but it was Lumic himself which brought other terrible memories back to the Doctor's mind. Between the time he'd used his own energy and gave away 10 years of his life to the transducer cell and the time he and Rose were at the Tyler mansion and saw the Cybermen for the first time the Doctor had seen pictures of Lumic before his conversion or upgrade as the Cybus Cybermen called the butchery that stripped everything that made them what they were before being turned into an emotionless shell. It was obvious just by looking at Lumic he was suffering from a disease but he didn't know what it was, and there'd been no time to ask questions since it wasn't relevant. Smart and immaculate suits aside, Lumic had looked weak and helpless in that elaborate chair he needed to keep himself alive. The Doctor knew there were dozens of other wasting diseases that, in the 21st century, would be virtually incurable. Part of him wished he could metaphorically shake the human race up and made them see that they shouldn't waste their time on piffling little conflicts which get them no-where, and that they would be better off trying to rid themselves of diseases.

But he knew it wouldn't work. Humans had to grow on their own. He knew that, he had known it for centuries.

The Doctor didn't know what Lumic had done for that parallel world but it must have been good otherwise he wouldn't have had all those companies under his belt, but what scared the Doctor the most was the reminder to another brilliant scientific genius who became a king of his own little world. He had to shake his head, but his mind kept going back to thinking about Davros. He couldn't help himself. There were differences between the two men, but not many for comfort.

Why, why was it Lumic couldn't simply have developed the technology for himself and just simply built a cybernetic body that was an exact replica of his original body, and gone on to simply create others which appeared human rather than the blank faced, robotic bodies of the Cybermen for those with illnesses similar to his? Why did he feel that he had to play god like Davros and so many others before him, including Omega and Rassilon, and tear people's lives to shreds and feel justified simply because he was doing it? People like Sally Phelan at the prime of their lives, just waiting to get married, have children and build lives for themselves, they didn't have to die like that, not after suffering the nightmare of having their brains cut out of their bodies and then placed inside a shell, their emotions blocked off simply to hold their pain in check before it was unleashed by the cancellation code. They had the power to change history those people, to shape it, and carry the human race along. But no, Lumic had to seize the power his Cybermen represented and become as mad and power crazed as Davros had done with the Daleks, and Lumic had ignored the fact that the Cybermen wouldn't advance anything at all, not with the fact they were walking internet connections capable of downloading collective human knowledge and not seeing the point in building it up when they still had so much to do. The Doctor closed his eyes hoping that Mickey wouldn't make the same mistake he had made when the Time Lords sent him back through time to Skaro when Davros was close to his final breakthrough which led to the destruction of the Kaleds and the decimation of the Thals.

No.

Mickey wasn't like him. He had seen the carnage the Daleks had caused from their invasions of Earth, Spiridon, Kembel and Exxilon to say nothing of the people they had killed off again and again their justification of universal supremacy. But he had also seen that fear of the Daleks had galvanised races into becoming allies to make themselves strong enough to fight back against the Daleks. Mickey had just seen the Cybermen take control of that parallel London and marching those people into that Battersea factory where their brains were cut out and put into those suits of armor. He had seen the Cybermen electrocute his own parallel self, knew that the Cybermen had murdered Mrs Moore aka Angela Price. A good woman who had quickly become a good friend. Why was it always the new people who suffered? Mickey had seen the dark side of the Cybermen though their good side didn't really exist, knew that if he hesitated then he could lose his life like his parallel self had to those emotionless shells and he was unlikely to suddenly hesitate when it came to destroying Cybermen.

The Doctor shivered and tried to get some rest while he waited for the TARDIS to finish healing the cracks in time, hoping his mind wasn't going to show him more memories of the Cybermen or the Daleks. He didn't want to relive all those horrible moments like when he'd first met Davros, and the Kaled scientist had pretended to go along with his own government before betraying his whole race to the Thals, or during that time on Necros where he conducted his sick experiments turning humans in cryogenic suspension into food while building a new Dalek species. But he didn't get the chance. Rose came loudly into the console room, but the Doctor did his best to ignore her stomping though despite inwardly wishing she would go away and leave him alone. He didn't get his wish. Rose came close to the pilot chair and prodded him. Sighing he looked up into her face. Rose had clearly been crying, her eye makeup which she applied so thickly though why he had no idea had been running like a waterfall breaking up a muddy bank. But her eyes themselves were determined.

"I wanna get Mickey back," she said her eyes resolute.

The Doctor checked the scanner screen to check the progress of the dimensional stabilisers he saw that the crack was repaired as best as it could be, and the TARDIS was busily repairing other potential fractures in the vortex. There was no way the crack could be suddenly ripped open without causing lots of damage, though he knew it could happen if he wanted it too. But he wasn't going to.

He sighed wearily as he tried to find the right words to get Rose to understand before realising nothing he could say would be listened to. Rose simply didn't listen to any advice. She was too full of herself to think normal rules applied to her. "Rose, I have just closed the crack-" the Doctor began but Rose interrupted him, and he wasn't surprised by what came out of her mouth next. "Then open it again, come on you've got the TARDIS. Surely you can do that."

"I can't just rip open a hole in the vortex that I've just closed," the Doctor snapped back, deciding to forego his usual diplomacy he'd use normally to placate her. But he knew he could reopen the crack, and with there being remains of the crack it wouldn't be difficult to reverse the process and open the crack again. But he wasn't going to do it. He decided to tell a truth hidden as a question, it should throw Rose off. "Say I do open that crack again how do I make sure it leads to the same universe we left Mickey behind? There are millions of different universes stacked up against one another Rose, and the TARDIS can't just suddenly find one specific one. It's not designed to do that."

Again, another half truth. The TARDIS probably could, if the circumstances were ideal, enter other universes as they pleased through cracks without sustaining so much damage, but because they'd fallen through the crack he'd just repaired without preparing themselves or even trying to slow down and escape the TARDIS had had a lot more to do as she tried to stop the energy drain than check the quantum signature of the universe they were entering. It was the same as they'd left, the TARDIS had been more concerned with controlling the energy she had left and getting them back to their universe.

"But I wanna have him back!" Rose whined, again not listening to him and failing to realise that he was simply not taking her seriously. The Doctor was disgusted by her childish antics, he knew he himself was childlike at times but there were times you had to be an adult, and he was finding he needed to be one more and more whenever Rose was around.

"He made his decision to stay Rose. He accepted the fact we couldn't go back for him, and he didn't seem to be bothered that I'd have to close the crack which took us into that parallel world. He wants to be with his grandmother, spend the time he couldn't have when he was younger. If he wants to do that then he's welcome too. I envy him."

"You...what?"

"I envy him. Rose," the Doctor repeated patiently. "I've lost friends and loved ones as well, do you really think I wouldn't say no to wanting to be with them again, even a parallel version?" he asked her pointedly, trying to make Rose see the type of hypocrite she was for thinking she could suddenly leave her Jackie for a parallel version which wasn't the strong woman who'd raised her. The Doctor knew Rose had issues because her father had died when she was too young to remember him, knew it was his fault for telling Rose the TARDIS was a time machine though she'd quickly have figured that out and allowing her to visit him in the past on the day he died to try to live her fantasy of one big happy family out. It was never going to happen but Rose simply never learnt from her mistakes. She had tried this before with a younger version of her parents, and it had nearly destroyed the history of Earth. The Doctor had known the moment he saw that bloody billboard showing that image of Pete Tyler wearing that smart suit and that vitex stuff that nothing good would come of it.

And he was right. Pete had run off when Rose had told him the truth about who he was, and Jackie had ignored her and dismissed her as staff. What did Rose expect? Did she really believe if she suddenly turned up on the doorstep of her parents parallel selves they would simply accept her? Personally the Doctor didn't see why she had suddenly believed it would happen, but it was clear Rose hadn't given a thought to the woman she had left behind, alone, on Earth. Her Earth. Whoever said she was thoughtful?

Rose looked a little sheepish but he wasn't fooled. He had the sinking feeling Rose would keep on fantasising and trying to find ways of making it work with or without his approval. That was the chief difference between her and Mickey. Mickey had grown up, knew what was attainable and what wasn't, and had found he simply didn't need Rose in his life anymore and he would no longer suddenly be there at her beck and call waiting like a puppy expecting to be given a treat simply because he obediently came to her. The Doctor stepped around the girl and checked the scanner before putting the TARDIS into motion whilst checking the energy gauges. Great. The TARDIS needed refueling and quick after losing so much of her energy in that universe, but he'd expected that.

Rose still didn't get the hint. She opened her mouth just as he inputted the destination he wanted the TARDIS to get to. "But the TARDIS still has that energy left, right? It won't take much to open it for a bit, go in and get him. I wanna get him back, doesn't that matter?"

The Doctor was by now resisting the urge to scream at her, but knew it would do no good, and that Rose wouldn't go away until she had a good answer. "Rose, all of you leave in the end. Mickey left us because he felt he could make a difference, and because he wanted the version of his grandmother to still have a grandson, even if she slapped him or not. Stop thinking about yourself and think about him and what he wants and respect that."

"But I'll never see him again!"

Oh god, why was it of all the humans he'd chosen to travel with him after the Time War, it had to be a human that simply refused to grow up and become an adult? The Doctor's hearts sank as he watched the look of sadness on her face turn into stubbornness. Why couldn't she get it into her thick skull? That was the point, and besides if Mickey did want to return he might find a way though it was unlikely. A thought entered his mind. Oh no. He went to the controls and started setting them urgently. "What's wrong?"

"Jackie. She doesn't know what Mickey's done," the Doctor said as he finished setting the controls and directed the TARDIS towards Earth - he would've preferred to stop over at another temporal rift or supernova to top up her energy supply, but there was enough energy for her to do this. He hoped.

"Mum? Why?" The look of confusion, as much as he hated to admit it, was an improvement. The Doctor sighed. "You don't know, do you? Ever since you left your mother and Mickey on Earth to come with me they became closer to each other for company. He was someone who knew where you really were, she knew if she confided in her friends they'd think she was mad. Jackie needs to know."

Personally the Doctor hoped the visit would remind Rose of the mother she had, not a woman who was so close to divorcing Pete. That Jackie had been a stranger, never thought of having kids as far as he'd heard but the Doctor hadn't really been keen on finding out the nuances of the parallel Tylers when he had had enough problems on his plate already, and yet he reminded himself Rose had believed she only needed to knock on the door and say "Hi, I'm Rose. I'm from a different universe, and I'm your daughter. Now what's for dinner?" and expect instant acceptance.

* * *

The Doctor was slumped in an armchair in Jackie's living room, lodged between the wall and the TARDIS itself. They'd been here already for an hour and a half and Jackie hadn't left Rose's room. He'd overheard Jackie and Rose talk, but he had pushed it out of his mind to wait for Jackie to come out and speak to him. From the sounds of it Jackie was putting Rose to bed. She came into view, leaning against a corner. "Do you want something to drink? I was thinking of making some tea."

"I'd love some, thanks," he said, placing one hand on the side of the TARDIS and gauging how much energy she had left. There was enough to last a little longer, but the sooner he left for Cardiff, the better. He had made his mind up to leave Rose here. She'd get under his feet if he took her.

Jackie nodded and busied herself in the kitchen. He took his mug from her when she came back and sat down opposite him. "What happened Doctor? Rose wouldn't tell me, she just kept crying that Mickey was gone."

The Doctor took a sip of tea, feeling the hot liquid pass down his throat. He'd been expecting this, knowing Rose was too shattered and when she had seen her real mother she had stopped thinking and fantasising about a couple who simply were not her parents no matter what genetics said though it made little difference; one had been converted into a Cyberman had was probably dead after he and Mickey had found the cancellation code for the emotional inhibitor and the other one was so stunned by everything that meeting his biological though not daughter had shattered whatever tolerance he had left. "We fell through a crack in time. We found ourselves in a parallel world similar to this one but very different. Pete was still alive and still married to you, but Rose had never been born. Mickey's grandmother was still alive, and that was one of the factors that made him want to stay."

Blinking in surprise that a version of her husband was alive Jackie sipped her tea, a look of bitterness on her face.

"I remember her. She was the only parent figure he had, but she did slap him like you wouldn't believe." She shook her head angrily, clearly disapproving of the other woman's actions. "Did Rose tell you about her habit?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah, she did."

He didn't plan on telling her how Rose had laughed at the thought of someone being bullied by a family member after both parents had legged it, but Jackie seemed to know, "Does she still find it funny that Mickey was bullied by her?"

The Doctor nodded. He had known Rose had some good and bad points to her personality like everyone else, but while he might have teased Mickey, though he knew he'd bullied the guy, even he knew how stunted and hurt he was after the war, he drew the line towards physical abuse and finding humour in it.

Jackie sighed and shook her head. "She always found it funny to watch Rita-Anne slap him, but others didn't find it funny - there was even talk about calling social and stopping it, but Mickey didn't seem to have a problem with it. I won't say I liked her, I respected her for being blind and yet being strong enough to help raise her grandson. But why else did he want to stay in that parallel world, I know he wasn't around when she died and felt bad about it afterwards, but why?"

The Doctor took a sip of his tea, as he tried to figure out how to answer when it came to him. "There are races out there that I've encountered, but very few of them have made me think as much as the Cybermen. They are who we met and fought in that parallel world, but in this universe I've encountered them so many times. They started off on an ordinary world when their people realised their race was getting weak, so they devised bionic and cyber technology to remove body parts and eventually they went so far they removed all emotions simply to stop the pain they were causing themselves. What they were left with was a being that was more a robot than a human being."

The Doctor studied Jackie's horrified face and knew she was wondering how anyone could want to do something so disturbing. "In that parallel world the Cybermen were just beginning, created from scratch on another Earth by a scientific genius. A genius who was dying. There's nothing worse than that."

"What was he dying of that would make him want to live like that?" Jackie was looking ill, not that he blamed her.

"I don't know, I didn't ask him and to be honest I didn't want to know," he replied honestly. "But I saw pictures of him. You could tell he was in a bad way, he just went out of his way to avoid it being speculated upon. But you could see he knew he couldn't simply wait for someone to magically whip up a cure for his illness so he decided to play god, and experiment with cybernetics to take the brain out and stick it in a metal shell. What started as a way to live forever became a mad plan for power. I've seen them so many times, it's always boring." The Doctor looked away before he admitted, "The Mickey of that world was part of a group of people who hated the scientists company and knew it was involved in some really unpleasant things, and they hoped to expose Cybus industries. But they were in over their head. They didn't know the full extent behind Lumic's actions. They knew he was taking people off the streets, those who wouldn't be missed, but they knew nothing of what the end result would be. But we managed to shut one of the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors, and found the person that Cyberman had been was a young woman who was getting married."

Jackie's hand went to her mouth. The Doctor heard her whisper a prayer to that unfortunate woman, not that he could blame her. "We had to shut down the emotional inhibitors of all the Cybermen before they took over the world. It's a terrible way to die, it's like a waking nightmare you can't escape from. I made the decision because I felt it was best for them to die as humans rather than live as Cybermen. Wouldn't you prefer to die knowing what you'd become rather than having that part of you amputated? Mickey had the code on Rose's phone, and he could've simply handed it to the surviving Preacher, but he decided to stay behind."

What Jackie said next surprised the Doctor a little but not much. "Did he just want to stop them and be with his nan, or did he also want to get away from Rose? Don't look surprised, I don't blame him. Mickey told me about how Rose treated him after handing over that passport in Cardiff, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before she ditched him for good. She's done it before; she finds a boyfriend who can give her the things she has wanted all her life but I couldn't provide, but when that boyfriend can't give her everything she looks for one who can. You're just the latest in a long line, but she'll want to stay close to you longer because of the TARDIS."

The Doctor didn't try to hide the sigh that came out of his mouth. "If she thinks anything is going to happen she'll be waiting a long time. I don't love Rose, Jackie. I care about everyone who travelled with me, and I might have been…..damaged by the Time War, but I would never go that far. Maybe there's someone else out there for me, then again maybe not, but it is not Rose."

Jackie looked at him closely for a minute before she nodded. "I believe you, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, the last you seemed taken with her-"

"And then I saw for myself how she was with other men," the Doctor interrupted. "We met two other men after we'd dealt with the Slitheen, Jackie. And Rose flirted with both of them whilst Mickey was in this time. The first one tried to change history and the second one had a better understanding of how dangerous that was, but Rose didn't seem to have any problem being with either of them."

Okay, he had heard that women in the 21st century didn't like being accused of being too promiscuous, but he needed to point out to Jackie what her daughter was like. But fortunately Jackie wasn't offended, she just sighed sadly. "Maybe, but don't think for a moment Rose will just let you go, she does everything she can to get what she wants. So why is it you can't go back for Mickey?"

Grateful for the change of topic though he sensed Jackie needed to work out what she was going to do about Rose, the Doctor took another gulp of tea. "When we fell through the crack in the vortex, it nearly destroyed the TARDIS. We only managed to get back because one single energy cell still had some energy left inside it, other time travellers might not be lucky. It's like a train being derailed, there's a chance everyone on board will be killed when the carriages roll down the hill. Do you understand that now?"

Jackie sighed, but the Doctor caught the understanding in her face. She was getting it better than Rose. But he still went on. "It's also part of my duty as a Time Lord to safeguard time; it goes against everything I know and have been taught to just walk away from cracks like that, even if someone I care about is on the other side of that crack. Besides, even if I had left the crack open there was no guarantee the crack would lead to that particular universe. It was too dangerous to leave open."

"The vortex….isn't that the thing Rose got into when you were dealing with the Daleks?"

How do you explain to a human what the Time Vortex was and what it actually meant? "The Time Vortex is a lot more than that," the Doctor rubbed his face, "Centuries ago the Time Lords discovered time travel but to do that we needed a colossal energy supply and a universal wormhole capable of linking places in the universe and at every time. The Vortex is still one of the Time Lords' greatest symbols and contributions to universal history. There's a connection in every TARDIS to the vortex, think of a train with a third rail giving it electricity - its not a train but think of it like that - and this connection allows the TARDIS and the Time Lords to perceive the events connected inside the vortex. What Rose did when she opened the console up was reckless and nothing like a Slitheen being regressed - that was basic and small potatoes, but it made things a little more unstable. If she tries to take the vortex inside her again - ever - not only will she die, but the universe will be brought down too. There's only so much it can take now the Time Lords are gone."

The Doctor looked away sadly but while Jackie was clearly sad for him she wanted to know something else.

"I need to ask this….Could you ever try to get Mickey back, is it really dangerous?"

The Doctor looked at her. He looked at her for a long time before nodding and sighing. "In the old days when my people were around you could enter those different universes and come back safely, but not anymore. The walls of reality have closed. I understand the nature of the walls, the theory, but not the mechanics, so I can't reopen them. I'm afraid to even try because if I get anything wrong, with the universe in its state at the moment, it could collapse. What happened in the vortex was a fluke, but the potential danger is still out there. It won't go away."

He was about to take another sip when he stopped again. "The only way to get Mickey back without the universe tearing itself to shreds is a natural anomaly opening up, but even that won't be a guarantee. There are so many parallel universes out there, and even if we did find something there's a chance Mickey has already died. Time doesn't necessarily need to run the same, like for instance 5 minutes ago here could have been 50 years for Mickey."

Jackie sighed. "I can't believe he's gone," she said and looked into her mug of half drunken tea. "And I can't believe that another Pete is running around."

The Doctor shrugged, pleased the topic had been moved away from the previous subject. "There was bound to one out there. And there was also bound to be another you with him, at least until Lumic came along. Listen, I've got to leave soon. I have to recharge the TARDIS with a time rift. She sustained a lot of damage falling through into that universe."

Jackie looked at the outer police box shape of the TARDIS. "It's mad, the way you and Rose talk about the TARDIS like its alive."

"That's because she is alive. TARDISes are grown, not built. They're created using a form of higher dimensional mathematics, the concept is far above the capacity of many species in the universe. The real organic factor is in the protyon core, a collection of cells made from unstable organic matter. The core is the living soul and brain of the TARDIS, just like the brain you have in your head, and the one in my own." The Doctor shook his head and started to stand up, handing the mug back to Jackie. "Thanks for the tea," he said.

"No problem. How long will you be gone for?"

The Doctor fell silent and hesitated. Jackie didn't like that so she asked a second time. The Doctor looked her in the face. "I should be back in the morning, tops. But….. I dunno, after falling into that parallel world I want to make sure there's not another anomaly similar out there in the vortex. If there is, I have to deal with it. If the Time Lords were around then they would have detected it right away and sorted it out, I have to physically travel around to find them, and that will take time."

"How much time?" Jackie asked, her voice telling him she wasn't happy with him just running away.

The Doctor bit his lip. "A month. I will have to circumnavigate the entire vortex, and it is a big job. The vortex is vast. I can't just snap my fingers and it will be all better in an hour. I have to go, Jackie. I've been putting off my duties as a Time Lord too much since the end of the war."

"Do you want me to wake Rose?"

"No. I want to go alone. Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't trust Rose with this. Last year we were travelling with this other kid from the 21st century, a boy called Adam Mitchell, self proclaimed genius. Took him into the future. He ended up with a brain chip that literally opened his head up and he tried to rewrite human history by downloading knowledge you're simply not ready for. Rose was there, she saw what happened and how I reacted. What did she do? She tries to save her father, and bringing temporal creatures out to destroy the universe. I don't like the thought of Rose being there and potentially making a delicate process to awry."

To the Doctor's relief she took it rather well considering he was dissing her daughter. Jackie sighed, "That's one of the things I hate about myself. I never seem to learn from my mistakes, except for the big ones. I've made some really bad ones since Pete died, Doctor, and I've tried to keep Rose away from them. But she's become a handful since she hit her teens. Worse, when she doesn't get the things she wants or thinks she needs she finds someone who'll give it to her. Do you really think you'll be back in the morning?" Jackie asked, giving him a probing look. "'Cos I remember the last time you told her she was only gone a short time. It ended up being 12 months."

The Doctor winced. "I know, I'm sorry about that."

He crossed his fingers.

* * *

The Cardiff rift was one of the largest temporal rifts on the planet, so it made the logical choice for the Doctor to take the TARDIS for refuelling. The only downside was the Doctor knew Jack was there. The thought of his old friend and what he'd become made him both feel sick physically to his stomach and his hearts and angry about the carelessness Rose had exhibited during that mess. Finding out Jack was there wasn't difficult - he had tracked the human via his biodata to the 21st century, and he knew the former Time Agent had used his vortex manipulator to go back into the past, but had overshot, and was forced to spend 100 years living throughout the 20th century.

Tracking biodata was very straightforward, and since Jack had left a few hairs in his room it was easy to get a sample. The only problem was he'd had to do it without Rose knowing. The girl would have asked too many questions, and she would want to return to Jack. The Doctor had done it to let himself know where Jack was. It made him sick to think about what Jack had become - no human, no matter how much they would want to, could live forever. Okay - gene manipulation was fine because it could be renewed once every few decades, giving the human the chance to decide whether he or she actually wanted to live. Jack didn't have any choice. He was fixed in time and space. A fact.

The Doctor's hands were poised over the console, studying the output of energy leaking from the rift. He had decided to travel back through time to the point where his previous self was recharging the TARDIS, but he knew better than to simply land and hope his Ninth self wouldn't notice him. The last 24 hours had made him more determined to make sure time was running smoothly. The solution was to wait until his Ninth self left Earth and reentered the vortex and then materialise to soak up some of the residual energy knocking about from where Blon Fel Fotch ripped open the rift with the extrapolator.

The Time Lord had chosen to go back through time to this point simply because he wanted to gather up one of the largest eruptions of temporal energy without needing to wait for a few days and risk Jack's noticing his presence, even though he was prepared to do that before deciding to just gather the energy in one go and head for somewhere else to be alone, to gather more power for the TARDIS to be self sufficient for a longer timeframe and to make repairs in complete solitude.

As he waited for his previous self to leave - tracking his Ninth self's TARDIS was simple enough - the Doctor kept an eye on the power levels and sighed. He missed Gallifrey for many personal and practical reasons, but this one never failed to remind him of what the TARDIS herself had lost, her prime energy supply.

When he had recovered his sanity after regenerating after the war and consequently trying to forget his war incarnation for the crimes he'd committed, the Doctor had hated it when he had needed to travel to a time rift to soak up the energy leaking from it. While he hated Rassilon for what he'd become in the war, the Doctor thanked him for his contributions to Gallifreyan science, particularly the Eye of Harmony. With the planet….gone from the war, the Eye was gone as well. It had crossed the Doctor's mind to recreate the Eye after the fall, but he'd quickly decided against it. While using a black hole as a source for power was straightforward enough, but nothing was ordinary about the Eye of Harmony. Rassilon's memories were there in the Matrix, but only an echo and there was only a small amount of information about the Eye and the theory behind its workings for people to look at it, but when his fourth incarnation had saved the planet from the Master's attempt to steal the power of the Eye to renew his regeneration cycle, Sprandrell had argued with him, saying the Eye was a myth and it no longer existed.

But that was typical of Gallifrey, afterwards when it got out the Eye did actually exist knowledge of it began to spread but they saw fit to leave it alone, especially when it became clear that the Time Lords would need a century just to understand the basic principles of what Rassilon had done to create it in the first place.

He wasn't so lucky; the Time Lords would have had the full resources of Gallifrey at their disposal, giving them a 100 year job. If he tried to try to duplicate the Eye he had estimated it could take as long as 500 years just to fully try to understand how Rassilon had created the original Eye and the physics that went with it. He loved the TARDIS, but she didn't have the up to date resources of Gallifrey to do the job of learning how the Eye worked and how to recreate it. The principles weren't exactly taught at the Prydonian academy, so the Doctor had little idea where he would start and he no longer had access to the Gallifreyan matrix which contained Rassilon's essence and scientific knowledge. To make matters worse he would need to find a Population 3 star, one of the first stars in the universe, and there was little data on them rather than use a basic and common star which would have been more ideal and make his job much easier rather than harder. As far as he knew Omega had used the last Population 3 star to begin the process simply because it was the most powerful star he'd found. And then there was the issue with how Rassilon had managed to harness the energy in the first place, and what the components of the eternally dynamic equation Rassilon had used to stabilise the mass of the Eye against Gallifrey itself. Had he used mass, the combined though unstable gravities of both the planet and the black hole itself? The Doctor didn't know. But he did know that if he got even the slightest thing wrong it would be a disaster. Plus he didn't know where he could actually place the new Eye if he made one without anyone knowing.

There were also legends of the Hand of Omega - there was one legend that had cropped up during his study of early Time Lord history that claimed there was more than one of the stellar manipulators, and the Doctor knew that although it was easy to create a device that could blow up a sun it was a lot more difficult to use it to manipulate a black hole. Only Time Lords of higher rank received any knowledge of black holes and the physics behind them, though the Doctor wasn't a slouch.

And so the Doctor had given up hope of making the project work. He had spent a whole 6 years trying to work out the finer details of the science behind the Eye before he gave up, and he was left with some very disheartening questions. Where was the best place to find a Population 3 star? How many devices like the Hand of Omega would he need to set up the explosion? He knew that the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey was significantly different from the copy in his TARDIS - the one in his TARDIS was a mathematical copy created using a fragment of the real Eye that was like a cutting from a plant to provide a template, but it was basically a sun on its way to becoming a black hole but was actually suspended in time so the potential energy was harnessed. He knew he couldn't enhance its abilities, the copy of the Eye was not designed to be a power station, it was an energy gathering accumulator. How do you go about harnessing the nucleus of a black hole without falling inside the damn thing in the first place? The Doctor knew from his history lessons and what he'd gathered over the years when confronted by encounters with Rassilon and Omega through the years that the stasis halos used to protect people from falling into the same fate as Omega were comparatively simpler and less efficient than the ones used by Rassilon and his fleet when the Eye was first gathered. There were stasis halos in the TARDIS for engineers to do work on the Eye's copy in the lower levels of the TARDIS, but they weren't designed for the type of work Rassilon and Omega had done all those aeons ago.

Where would he place it if he spent five centuries studying and building the new Eye? How would he make sure no-one tried to find it and use its power to cause more harm than the universe needed? He couldn't simply plant it on a planet like Earth either - the humans would find it, get themselves killed, or worse destroy their whole solar system. Besides there were races out there who would notice if he suddenly went about creating a new Eye. And then there was what would happen to the new Eye once he passed away for the final time. He didn't have that many regenerations left and the TARDIS would likely die with him, and where would the Eye be then? The idea of primitive human race being given beech loading weapons by a lone Sontaran was nothing compared to another race getting their hands on such a dangerous piece of Time Lord technology.

Finally the moment he was waiting for came. His last self had left Earth. The Doctor materialised the TARDIS on Earth. The first thing he did was triple deadlock the doors to stop anyone - namely Jack who he knew was here in the city - from getting inside, and he opened the engines and let the energy trickle in. The Doctor left the TARDIS to it, knowing that the engines would soon finish the recharge soon so he began to make a few basic repairs whilst checking up on other systems for damage after entering and leaving that parallel world. By the time the engines were finished refueling, the Doctor had repaired 80 different components and found other systems which would need repairing soon.

When it was finished he checked the energy levels and was satisfied, but he wanted and needed to do a lot more. His eyes went to the power cell he'd found under the console which had played a crucial role in getting them back to their home universe. The Doctor picked it up and studied it, there was no glow but that was unsurprising. A plan started entering his mind. The TARDIS had nearly been stranded inside the parallel world with the Cybermen, and one single power cell had done the job of the entire output of the TARDIS. The Doctor didn't want to be caught out like that again, so he decided to plan. Parallel universes were one thing that would need such a cell, what if the TARDIS ran out of energy suddenly and he needed to get her to a temporal rift quick?

The Doctor reopened the engines and plugged the cell back into the console, setting the controls to pour rift energy back into the cell. The minutes ticked by and the cell began to glow with energy again as the rift poured itself into the cell. But the Doctor decided relying on one single cell couldn't cut it. He jumped back under the console and removed 2 other cells from underneath the console. Once the original cell was charged he placed another in its place quickly, and repeated the process with the third cell before he would remove it later During all this the Doctor decided to spoil the TARDIS a little bit to help her get better from her shock and pain, but also to help him repair any other potential cracks or fractures in the vortex, and he accessed the navigational charts to find a supernova powerful enough for what he wanted to do, and found one quickly. It took only a few minutes for the newly reenergised TARDIS to reach it, and the Doctor plugged one of the cells into the slot again whilst he opened the engines up and siphoned supernova energy into the TARDIS and poured some into the power systems and into the energy cell. After topping all three cells up with nova energy the Doctor closed the engines a little bit to regulate the flow of power to give him the opportunity to work a bit more on the TARDIS while avoiding the chameleon circuit besides making a few examinations of it.

For 4 days the Doctor was repairing bits and pieces before he sealed the engines and left. Between the nova and the Cardiff rift, he estimated the engines had enough energy to burn through for at least 13 years, maybe more before he needed to refuel them. By then the TARDIS was fully reenergised, and the Doctor left the supernova. Once the TARDIS was back inside the vortex, the Doctor disengaged the curiosity circuits which would mean she wouldn't be interested in anything outside the vortex. It would also mean the TARDIS wouldn't want to take him to other places that would need his intervention. The Doctor was simply not in the mood to get involved with things like that. It was one of the reasons he hadn't wanted Rose around either. The girl would get bored and whiny about having to spend so much of her precious time inside the TARDIS when all he wanted was to make sure there weren't any nasty surprises around for him in the vortex.

So he spent most of his time in the console room as the TARDIS travelled through the vortex. Despite it being a wormhole, where distances were reduced so a journey which would take thousands of years in normal space only took a few minutes or up to an hour, the vortex didn't have an exit and so he could travel around and around in circles. The size of the vortex made his job much harder, he had spent most of his time after the war once he remembered his responsibilities as a Time Lord after pulling himself together though the guilt of what he had done was still lingering like a dark shadow over everything he did repairing the damage caused by the Daleks and the Time Lords. But this was on a larger scale and it required so much more energy. Thats why he'd spent so long near that nova to siphon the energy off, so he could heal the fractures in the vortex. Nearly every day was spent healing the cracks, fractures and wounds in the vortex. After effects of the war or simply his lack of maintenance.

There were some areas of the Time Vortex which made travel for the TARDIS ten times harder than it should have been, and so he spent as much of his time and energy healing the vortex in those regions though some of the damage made him cringe. How could he have let it get this bad? The answer was simple - he had let himself get distracted. Nah, he couldn't really blame Rose though she did need to take some of it. The real problem was himself. He simply hadn't wanted to sort out the real damage to the vortex because he simply wanted to have fun and to delay the work in the first place because he didn't want to face up to the reality that the Time Lords were gone, but those days were long since over. The Time Lords were gone. He was all that was left. He needed to pick up the slack and take some responsibility for once in his damn life. He simply had no choice despite putting it off for so long. But that fall into the parallel world made it clear - with the other Time Lords gone, he was the only one left who should at least make the universe and the Time Vortex better. Okay, so he might not be able to properly do all the work with the limited resources he had available, but he was good at making do, and besides this was a good start. The days went by and in all of those days he healed the vortex. True, some of the damage left behind too much paradoxical scaring on the vortex, which would make time travel hazardous, but he did the best he could and spent as much time as he could making as much effort as he could.

* * *

The Doctor studied the controls as the TARDIS went around and around the cosmos, but he didn't see anything interesting. The days were going by fast, but in the Vortex and in the TARDIS a month went by incredibly quickly. He sighed wearily; he hated doing this, hated having to do it. Oh, he'd done it once as a Junior Time Lord assigned like so many others to Temporal Control on Gallifrey. The Doctor remembered those days, remembered how….simple they had been in comparison to how things were now. Because they had been simple, hadn't they? No Daleks. No Cybermen. No annoying human companions who couldn't be bothered to get the hint. Ah, who was he kidding? The Time Lords hadn't been easy either, all those pompous rules and their inflexible approach to life; why should they change it? Their way of living and governing time had worked for 10 million years.

But at least when he'd left Gallifrey, the Doctor had never needed to worry about this type of work since the Time Lords did it for him. He'd managed to get away from Temporal Control when he first 'borrowed' the TARDIS. He had spent decades working in Temporal Control learning how the Time Lords governed the Web of Time, learnt how they could quickly find flaws in time and space and assign workers to fix it up all nicely. All part of the Time Lord plan to maintain order over time and space, too busy focusing on the big picture than taking note of what they should be doing. The Doctor smiled nostalgically as he remembered the way his second self had stood up against the council during that trial after the War Lord's temporal dissolution. He still agreed with his younger self about the level of evil and cruelty out here in the universe whilst the Time Lords lived peacefully, protected from the lesser civilisations like the Dominators, the Zygons and the Sontarans (the last one's invasion didn't really count since the Sontarans had left his homeworld alone after that), but now…..

After everything that had happened to him over the years, the Doctor had grown up a little; he was no longer that unkempt little man who had stood up against the Time Lords who he knew would punish him for what he'd done away from Gallifrey, the unkempt man who would eventually see how truly dark life would become starting on that very day and watch as things became more and more dark. He'd fought in a war that had nearly seen the universe collapse, and had now left that same universe hanging by threads now Gallifrey was….gone. His younger self would never have endured it because of their moral stance on life.

But he was different. He'd regenerated so many times, watched as companions came and went, fought dozens of plans that would see a war break out or a race become extinct, to say nothing of the atrocities he'd seen being committed. Worse, some atrocities had been committed by the Time Lords themselves. The Doctor had been infected with a disease. Oh, not a deathly disease, but rather a sickness of the mind.

Apathy.

He still cared about the universe, but now he was so tired of the universe after it had dragged him down so often that he wondered if he was even doing any good in the long run. Sometimes…sometimes he felt as though the Time Lords were right to set up that law of non interference, and he wondered if some Time Lords had gone out there solo like he'd done, and interfered with other cultures to see what happened before that disaster on Minyos forced his race to see it was unacceptable. But for centuries he had gotten involved, spent an entire exile to Earth fighting the likes of the Daleks, the Nestene Consciousness and the Master, all because they were dangerous and their plans would have a wide impact on history.

Where had that life gotten him?

His race was dead.

His planet was gone.

His family were….gone.

All he had left was his TARDIS, his duty as a Time Lord, and an annoying human companion. Sometimes the Doctor was so tempted, just slip back in time to Gallifrey while it still existed, warn them of the war. The Doctor shook his head. No. There was too much danger. Even if he could force his eighth self to get involved without regenerating on Karn after that mess with Cass, there was no guarantee things would be better. And as much as he hated to admit it, his war incarnation had done so much good during the war even if he'd given up hope at the end before Cinder's death pushed him so far…

I won't think about that, the Doctor was resolute. Even if he could go back he couldn't; he might want nothing more than to return home and find his people alive and well, but he had to be realistic. If he travelled back he could inadvertently kill his warrior self, and the Time War might never end. His previous self had won the battle so many times, his death would be disastrous. His previous self, his real tenth self, had toyed with the idea not long after his regeneration, and it had haunted him on and off throughout his short life. But he'd always pushed it away when he saw the potential paradoxes crept in. That was the clincher behind his decision to just move on. If he went back, there was every chance he would cause more harm than good, force the Time Lords into a losing position far too early and it might even make them win the war, something he simply couldn't allow- his fourth self's careless expertise in repairing the computer that would become Xoannon, and turn the lives of the people involved into a hell, turning one group into a bunch of controlled, emotionless robots and the other into a tribe of degenerate savages (Leela might've been one of them, but she was the best out of that tribe) would forever haunt him, just as much as the recovered though hazy memory of how two regenerations later he would then try to strangle Peri; that one he'd recovered with the TARDIS's help. He had wanted to heal his mind and he had wanted to see if that explosive regeneration had damaged more of his mind than he'd first guessed.

His last self had made the wrong decision, highlighting the trauma of regeneration all too well before the right decision came along. But he had resisted temptation, but only because he had needed to recover some of his control and sanity to deal with the Nestenes on Earth. The decision, the right one that is, to simply move on or at least try to in this unkind universe had won out and was finally clinched in those few days where Adam Mitchell tried to change human history and then later when Rose tried to save Pete Tyler's life. The Doctor's face became more ghoulish as he grimaced, the low, dark light of the console room and the green glow of the time vortex highlighting each part of his frown and cast so much of his face into shadow at the thought of Pete Tyler.

Even if his plan to reconnect the TARDIS key with the TARDIS itself had worked though it had gone completely wrong when the Tyler family once more exposed their stupidity, he would never have let Pete live; his death was a vital part of Rose's life. It was the event that truly made her the girl she was. The Doctor had promised to repair the damage, but a live Pete Tyler had never been on his agenda. Rose would have been horrified by his cold blooded lack of compassion, so would all his previous companions. But he had to admit he could appreciate the types of decisions the Time Lords had made prior to the war.

No. Although he would have wanted Gallifrey back, the Time Lords still sitting in their lofty citadel completely blind to the universe around them, he simply couldn't go back to save them. There was no guarantee they'd return or would want to return to their previous state of passive observer after they'd tasted blood and war for the first time in aeons. In fact they wouldn't, the Doctor mused darkly. Rassilon had seen to that with his empty promises that had no guarantee of working in the first place.

This was how it was going to be, he thought to himself sadly. He would spend the rest of his lifetimes travelling in the TARDIS, picking one human after another up. There was no way Rose would stay forever if what Jackie had implied came to pass, and the girl's obvious infatuation with him disappeared in the face of the next model. He didn't care. But he did care about the fact that one day, when he had lived through his remaining two lives after he'd either exhausted his current self or, more likely, died to stop an invasion or something, everything that the Time Lords were, everything his people had worked for…..would just disappear. The thought made him cry. In fact he did cry when the depressing thoughts came to him. He was the last Time Lord. The last member of an ancient species who had protected time for millions of years. When he died, when the TARDIS finally broke down completely, it would all end. The Time Lords would become extinct. Forever until the universe finally collapsed and a new one would take its place, one where the laws of physics would be completely different, and a species would rise to become that universe's version of the Time Lords.

The Doctor couldn't and wouldn't live without the TARDIS. She was his constant companion, the last remnant of Gallifrey left besides all of her technology left in such a bleak universe. The full turmoil of emotion got to him and, uncaring of Time Lord dignity, he collapsed on the grated floor and started sobbing. He had lost all hope. He knew there wasn't a chance of repairing and monitoring everything out there, knew even if he found someone or a race to continue the work of the Time Lords they wouldn't be able to fully understand the burden that had come with his race. He also knew he wouldn't last forever with how careless he sometimes was with his regenerations, but he would make the effort to continue with his people's work and perhaps keep the universe going until its final collapse. It was an even bleaker future than the one he'd planned when he and Susan had left home, but it didn't matter now. This was life, not some half cooked up fantasy. His life without the Time Lords was a just punishment in his mind for what he'd done in the final days of the war. The TARDIS groaned as she tried to comfort him and he smiled at her mothering attitude, but the thought she would die made her even more depressed than he was.

* * *

The Doctor reactivated the curiosity circuits and started setting the controls to take him back to Jackie's flat. The circuits, newly reactivated, didn't give the TARDIS time to suddenly change course after inputting the final destination command. Besides the TARDIS seemed to have realised he just wanted to get back without any trouble. He'd gotten into trouble once with Jackie when it came to his timing, he didn't need it again with both her and Rose.

Fortunately he was in the corresponding point in the vortex, so the TARDIS didn't really have much choice but to do what he wanted, and he used his symbiotic connection to force the TARDIS to land him where he wanted to be. He had never liked doing this, but the Doctor was not in the mood for games from his own TARDIS. The TARDIS didn't like it either, but since he hadn't used the fullness of the nuclei in his system, just a small amount to make her see he wanted no trouble, she did what he wanted.

The Doctor took a moment to check to see if the TARDIS had landed in the right time and place, and was delighted when the TARDIS had landed him back in Jackie's flat. But when he stepped through the door he instantly checked the newspaper, nodding in satisfaction. He was still one day out from when he'd wanted to return, but that was fine.

"Rose? Jackie?" he called.

Silence. Assuming the Tyler women had left the flat, the Doctor looked around and turned the television on after checking the daily newspaper. He checked the news to see what was happening. The planet's constant conflict didn't really bother him; his travels to the planet had made him immune to the humans peddling little problems. But what annoyed him was how they couldn't solve their problems with diplomacy and had to constantly resort to violence. He could have stepped in but what would be the point if they learnt nothing from the experiences? It struck him as ironic; the humans kept preaching about becoming more diplomatic, and yet when it came down to it they simply refused to do it. In the end he simply decided to leave them to it. The Doctor was only glad and hoping that neither Jackie or Rose seemed to get the impression he should step in.

It wasn't worth the trouble in his mind.

The Doctor sighed and settled himself down and watched the TV, but he quickly became bored. Human news was so monotonous and dull it was all the same, he had come to that realisation when he and Susan had lived in Totter's lane so long ago. Thinking of Susan made the Time Lord sigh in sorrow. But he didn't have time to fully brood over her death, or possible death - he didn't know what had happened to her, and his decision to leave her get on with her life without taking the trouble to visit her still made his hearts ache - when the door noisily clanged open.

"Doctor?" Rose stuttered when she saw him sitting in the living room of her flat before her posture changed into that unlikeable moody teenager pose. Why she still did it when she wasn't a teenager technically he didn't know.

"Where have you been, you been gone for ages? Mum said you'd gone off in the TARDIS, why didn't you take me with you?"

The Doctor pierced her with a sharp look, the sudden darkness appearing on his face quelling her temper. "I wasn't planning on going anywhere, Rose, you'd have been bored out of your mind if you'd come with me. I travelled through the Time Vortex, repairing whatever damage was there, and trying to mend the TARDIS."

"But why?"

The Doctor frowned as he wondered where this was going. "Why what?"

"You've never really cared about the vortex, or whatever you call it, so why bother now?"

Had he really given that impression to Rose? He must have done, and it made him ill. The memory of his breakdown was still a sore point for him, one he was not going to mention because Rose would capitalise on it. The Doctor bit back the urge to snap at her, out of his peripheral vision he saw a tired but concerned looking Jackie come into his line of sight. How much had she heard?

Deciding that was unimportant for now, the Doctor closed his eyes and tried to keep his voice level. "Rose, why do you get the impression I've never cared about the Time Vortex? It's part of my duty as a Time Lord…."

"What does that mean?"

Annoyed by the interruption, the Doctor glared at Rose. "It means I have to protect time, like I did when Adam tried to change history by being selfish and downloaded everything from Satellite 5 into his parent's answering machine! How I tried to make you stop when you stupidly tried to save your father."

He noticed Jackie stiffen, but he ignored it but knew he had just crossed the line, but at that point he simply didn't care. He was tired of his stupid little human, this arrogant little ape who believed she could say and do anything and damn the consequences. "Being a Time Lord isn't something I can ignore," he said gently despite his growing impatience and anger with her, "I have responsibilities, and even after the war where my people were gone, I ignored the problems around me unless they were too great, such as that crack leading to the parallel world with the Cybermen. I had to close it, Rose. There are others who use the Vortex for time travel; the Time Lords practically made it easier for races to explore time by creating it, though they made sure to police it to make sure no one tried to damage it. Do you think no one else would have fallen in, and gotten trapped?

"Rose, we only got out because of luck. Others would not have been so lucky. And besides, even if I had left it open there's no telling whether it was stable enough to remain fixed between our universe and theirs." The Doctor sighed when he saw that Rose didn't seem to care about the fate of people becoming trapped in a universe not even their own. She's not listening to me. "Besides, there are some realities I really do not want connected to ours," he added, but he didn't elaborate.

The memory of how he'd wound up on that parallel Earth during the early days of his third incarnation where all his friends from UNIT were fascistic and cruel representations of themselves would always haunt him, but the memory of how he couldn't help them because they hadn't known who he was and refused to listen to him until it was too late when they burst that pocket of Stahlman gas would be one memory he would long to forget.

The Time Lords had other reasons for not wanting to travel to other universes - some of them were so odd that the laws of physics in some of them were so strange and different that even the Time Lords couldn't function in them. All of them seemed to have a power equivalent to that of the Time Lords, a first race that reached a peak of technological superiority they could cherry pick the laws of physics. One of those races were the Word Lords, and the disasters that Nobody No-One created would forever remind the Doctor of the damage they could do. The Doctor wasn't entirely sure if the Word Lords were still around after what had happened to their Hand of All if it did what he thought it did and what Nobody had implied, but if they were then what was to stop one of their evil and corrupted members into the multiverse? He didn't know for sure if the walls of reality being shut would help; those were physical barriers, matter and energy derived from the universe. A Word Lord didn't obey that kind of law.

The Doctor shook his head out of the nightmarish image of a Word Lord appearing and causing the same amount of destruction Nobody had created and focused on the conversation. Hopefully it would never happen, but still he would need to be careful and keep a watch for any unusual lingual patterns and disturbances out there. "Rose, I left because I had to, please don't fight with me on this," he pleaded.

* * *

In the end Rose got over her anger with him, along with the resentment that he wouldn't be able to get Mickey back. The Doctor kept an eye on her to make sure she didn't make the mistake or get any ideas into her head; Rose didn't understand how the TARDIS worked, but she was capable of anything when she was desperate. But after 3 days he wished she would just announce she wasn't to go home. As they continued their travels, there were a few moments where Rose seemed to be dad sick - his name for times when Rose talked about her father like he was a religious icon and wanting to visit him. Was she really that stupid? Did he give the impression off that he was stupid himself and had a really short memory? They came and went nearly each week, but now after visiting that parallel version of him the episodes were coming in more frequently. She was wasting her time - he had no intention of taking her back to visit Pete. In fact if she asked him he was sure he was going to slap her. Rose needed to wake up and get the hint that she wasn't going to get what she wanted, and if she wanted to stay travelling with him she would have to move on and stop seeing him and the TARDIS as a taxi service that went back and forth into Pete Tyler's life. He had learnt his lesson that humans, no matter what he thought of them, were incapable of resisting that type of temptation. It was truly upsetting after travelling with people like Sarah-Jane and Jo and the others, and if Rose thought she was the best then she needed a reality check. For a moment during one of those little episodes which had ended with a tantrum after he had politely/gently/firmly told her it wasn't going to happen, and she'd stormed out of the console room that he asked himself if Jackie would have done the same. But he shook his head. While Jackie had loved Pete, she was old enough (in human terms) to accept that some things were better left alone. Maybe she would want to speak to him, say hello, but the Doctor knew Jackie wouldn't have tried to save him. For her, Pete's death was closed. It was in her past and it should stay there despite knowing that there was a time machine which could take her back.  
What upset him was that she didn't learn from her mistakes, but he was no better when he thought about it, and she didn't seem to care about Mickey.

* * *

Please tell me what you think.


End file.
